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Sore Loserman

NPR reporter Luke Burbank, guest-hosting “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” mocked Sen. Joe Lieberman’s decision to run for re-election as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. Burbank ridiculed Lieberman, saying that “nothing, not poor poll numbers, not scorn from his party, not losing the damn primary, could stop him from running for Senate … selflessly ignoring the will of the people… . If [the independent campaign] doesn’t work, he’s planning a bloodless coup of the Bridgeport High School PTA.”

OK, that’s a fair point. But I was trying to think of how NPR might have treated other candidates who lost an election and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. One example was Rep. John B. Anderson (R-Ill.), who ran for the Republican presidential nomination. After losing every primary, he filed to run as an Independent. Nexis doesn’t include any NPR transcripts from 1980, but the general reaction of the mainstream media was to celebrate Anderson’s courage and independence in standing up to the extreme conservative Republican primary voters who gave the nomination to Ronald Reagan. That same year, liberal Republican Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) lost his primary to Alfonse D’Amato and went on to run as the Liberal Party nominee. Again, the media reaction was sympathetic.

But then I remembered a more recent example of a political candidate who wouldn’t give up, even after winning the election: Joe Lieberman in 2000, along with running mate Al Gore. So Lieberman may be the first candidate in American history to refuse to accept losing an election twice.